I make up worlds under other names & make people bleed in them. Ask me about pollinators, books, or how brains work. Not a team player. Miss Crankypants.
Tranquility Base
Joined January 2022
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A brief explanation for my increasingly convincing impersonation of a social media ghost:
My hands have apparently decided that years of faithful service are quite enough, thank you, and have entered into labor negotiations. Their demands are unclear, management is uncooperative, and the medical establishment has suggested that I simply continue using them, which strikes me as a questionable negotiating strategy.
Unfortunately, this means that holding a phone, typing, clicking, scrolling, and generally interacting with anything invented after the printing press have become rather unpleasant activities. Even dictation requires an irritating amount of tappy-tappy, and I’m currently rationing my supply.
Consequently, my online presence has dwindled from regular posting and socializing to the occasional drive-by observation, assisted by AI and sheer bloody-mindedness.
If I owe you a reply, I haven’t forgotten you. I’m working through my backlog as my hands permit. Nothing personal, unless you’ve been particularly annoying, in which case I reserve the right to pretend otherwise.
No sympathy required, please. I’m not soliciting condolences, medical advice, or inspirational refrigerator magnets. Just explaining why I’ve become unusually quiet.
I remain as opinionated as ever. I’ve simply lost the ability to inflict those opinions upon you at my customary rate.
Count me in.
Voyager 1 is about to cross a distance no other thing we’ve built has ever reached. After sunset on the 17th, a planet-wide wave of light — phones, flashlights, whatever we’ve got — spelling V-G-R into the dark. A small human signal for something that has traveled farther than we can easily hold in our heads.
Instructions are in the first NASA reply. See you out there. 🌌
A tiny bit of light can go a long way.
After sunset on Tuesday, Nov. 17, we invite you to “Shine Bright for Voyager’s Light-Day” by lighting a signal skyward, joining a worldwide celebration of this historic moment, nearly 50 years in the making.
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Current project: a metaphysical intergalactic espionage thriller.
Which is to say the characters are supposed to steal secrets while also having opinions about the nature of reality.
So far the reality is winning.
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Spent 40 minutes turning my face into a masterpiece. Then used a 10x mirror to dig something out of my eye and immediately met the cryptid who’s been living under my foundation. Men will never know this particular horror.
The spy is supposed to deliver the package, maintain her cover, and also resolve a minor ontological crisis before the docking clamps release.
She has not done any of these things.
She is currently arguing with a door.
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Bro, if you’d actually read the post instead of speed-running your own fanfiction, you’d know the “agitators” were the anti-ICE protesters who rolled up after ICE brought a detainee in for treatment—not the doctors and nurses.
Medical staff treat patients. They don’t show up with whistles, form an angry mob outside the ambulance bay, get into shoving matches, and then get arrested for assaulting federal agents. That’s the protesters. The ones Essayli was talking about.
So either you didn’t read it, or you’re being deliberately dishonest. Which is it? Because “doctors and nurses doing their jobs” is such a blatant misread that it borders on illiterate. The ER didn’t create the dangerous situation. The people who turned a medical transport into a protest did.
Try reading the words next time. It helps.
What agitators? Doctors and nurses doing their jobs? And what is this appeal to authority about congress and enforcing federal law? That has nothing to do with what transpired, and why does anyone have to qualify illegal or legal immigrants?
An emergency department's only job is to render care. This is no different than a street gang member getting brought to a hospital by cops. The staff treat the patient, everything else is irrelevant. Cops do not block bay doors and prevent other patients from being brought in by other ambulances.
Those officers caused health and safety risks o patients, and it doesn't matter where the hell those patients come from.
You are either being intentionally disingenuous, so demented by political brain rot that you can't recognize basic ethics and morality, or too stupid to understand how an emergency room works.
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Update from the ongoing hand mutiny: pain has dialed back a bit, which is welcome. Orthopedics, however, remains a masterclass in hurry-up-and-wait. Doctors are booked solid, so I’m stuck at this particular level of “interesting” until at least January. Apparently my joints need more time to negotiate.
Hands are still being rationed like wartime sugar—reserved for work that pays the bills and habitat improvement. (The dust bunnies have begun forming their own government.) Reply backlog is cleared except for @JohnMann72166 and @zerofoxgiven21 those should be done by tomorrow, barring further rebellion from the extremities. (If I missed you, shout out!)
Love my peeps. Sorry I’ve been quiet. Miss you. Love you.😘
On the upside: the new book is going very well. This is the one I’ve wanted to write for thirty years and never had the time for. Apparently all it took was my hands going on strike. Silver linings, or something.
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Beauty influencer makeup: 33 products and a full hour. I look fantastic. My bathroom looks like a Sephora exploded.
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I asked the character what she wanted.
She said she wanted the scene to be over so she could go stand in a closet and think about her life.
I don’t have a good argument against this.
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I have never been less excited to go to the salon. 😢
Seems a bitch to be spending an outrageous amount of money and not get any pleasure out of it. 🤷🏻♀️
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A character just explained, carefully and reasonably, why everything is fine.
Which is how I know it isn’t.
Still deciding whether to let them keep talking or cut them off mid-sentence and watch what they do with their hands instead.
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Filling out intake forms for the new doctor. Preferred language dropdown includes Old English (ca. 450–1100) and Middle English (1100–1500).
I’m this close to selecting one just so my chart notes say ‘patient prefers to receive all test results in Anglo-Saxon.’
Spent the morning hunting for a name that means the right thing in the right language family and doesn’t sound like I made it up while half-asleep.
Turns out “sounds right when you say it out loud” beats perfect etymology every time. The character still doesn’t have a name. I have a list of rejects and a headache.
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Every list of gift ideas has that one item that makes you realize the author has never been invited back to a holiday party.
Writing tip: if a scene feels flat, cut the line where the character explains what they just did. The action already said it.
Current status: deleted three perfectly good sentences that were only there to make me feel productive. The scene is better. I’m slightly annoyed about it.
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Ok, this is totally cool. 3DPrint your own astronaut costume accessories!
Houston, we have a costume upgrade. Dressing as an astronaut this Halloween? 🎃🧑🚀
Take your costume to the next level with your very own lunar geology tools. NASA has 3D files you can use to make replicas of the tools Apollo 17 astronauts used to collect samples on the Moon: nasa.gov/suits-and-rovers/sp…
ALT NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt uses a long-handled lunar rake to collect samples on the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission. Wearing a white spacesuit, Schmitt stands on the gray, dusty lunar surface, surrounded by rocks, and footprints at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. Schmitt’s shadow stretches across the ground. Photo taken by NASA astronaut Eugene Cernan. Credit: NASA
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